My preteen son decided to format the used iMac I bought for him because it was running slow. It's been a useless headache since because we can't reinstall Lion since we didn't originally buy it from Apple Store. I ordered the emailed download version and made several boot Usb drives but I get stuck on the gray screen with the spinning wheel. I think maybe the drive partition is locked and I can't change the size of the partitions. I've been trying everything and anything for several weeks and about to take a hammer to it. Any suggestions before this iMac goes to Heaven? I have a MacBook Pro with Yosemite and love it...this iMac is the devil.
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Save my iMac from the hammer
- Thread starter Bclymer
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Maybe the OPs iMac is a 2006/2007 model, (white) which are mostly limited to Lion.
@Bclymer - The original problem (running slow), and now a spinning wheel when you try to boot to the installer, may be related. Might just be a failing/failed hard drive.
@Bclymer - The original problem (running slow), and now a spinning wheel when you try to boot to the installer, may be related. Might just be a failing/failed hard drive.
I don't think the iMac 2006 will be support any OS X past snow leopard but I could be wrong
i should have rephrased that. My son thought it was slow but it was fine considering its age. He was playing mine craft and downloading add ons
i should have rephrased that. My son thought it was slow but it was fine considering its age. He was playing mine craft and downloading add ons
You are correct. The early and mid 2006 iMacs cannot go beyond Snow Leopard.
The Late 2006 iMacs, and 2007 white iMacs can all go to Lion.
If your iMac was running Lion before, it should be able to reinstall Lion now.
How did you make the bootable installer? Some USB sticks, if they have been erased multiple times, get very sluggish when creating or booting to an OS X install. I suggest using a new-out-of-the-pack 8GB USB stick. I like to use the good utility DiskmakerX to make the bootable installer. (You have to use version 3, not the version 5 that is used for later OS X versions.)
If that redone Lion installer stops at the same point, then I suspect that your hard drive is going bad. The struggling hard drive will also give you pretty slow performance, and erase/reinstall of OS X can push a failing hard drive over the edge.